The importance of the news that the Chinese Government has refused to ratify the "treaty concluded by its Envoy at Chinese question. The United States, which is just now enjoying the luxury of refusing ratification to a solemn treaty, will appreciate a situation in which the East comes to redress the grievances of the West. The Chinese have succeeded in making things pleasant all round—to Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Bayard, to Lord Salisbury and Sir Henry Parkes. In Sydney and Melbourne, as in London and Washington, the urgent question to-day in regard to the Chinese difficulty is, Where are we now, and what is the next move? I ask leave to explain the grounds, as I conceive them, on which the Chinese Government have acted in refusing ratification to the treaty, and also to suggest the course which should now be pursued, and which, indeed, should have been taken in the beginning, for, as I can show. the question has been bungled almost beyond belief in Sydney and in London; perhaps one ought to say in Sydney only, a8 Salisbury obviously made himself a mere con-ult pipe between the Sydney conference and the Chinese Government, and has not acted on his own independent judgment. However this may be, I do not think it will be difficult to show that the rejection of the United States treaty, involving as it does the rejection of the British overtures,
tralia included: it gives us an opportunity 8 good thing for the British Empire, Aus. of taking the course which we shoul have taken in the first instance, and of settling our internal difficulties ourselves, without calling in the aid of any foreign Power whatever. It may not be easy to persuade Sir Henry Parkes and his colleagues that their own little nostrum was not the best; and that even if it were, they to work; but men soon reconcile them-wont the very worst way about getling it selves to the inevitable, and, asa treaty is out of the question, some other method of settling the difficulty must be devised, and words of truth and soberness may have a chance of attention, And, first, why did the Chinese reject the treaty with the United States. They Tujected it hecnuse it was not," treaty which any self-respecting or, independent Power in the world would sign, or would be asked by another Powerto sign. Picture British asking the Russian Government te sign a treaty by which a class of Russian subjects—say, poor Poles—should be abso-
Unit taly prohibited from exerci Ng within the Kingdom the rights of the subjects and citizens of every other Power; or fancy the United States Presenting 'a treaty to Great Britain providing for the total exclusion of, say, Connemara peasants from American' ports. The answer would be prompt—No; I refuse to sign away the rights of even the poorest and meanest class of my subjects; if you want to get rid of them, do it yourselves within the limits allowed by treaties and international law, but Iam not going to aid you in imposing a disability on my people' which is not im-
Washington with the United States Govern- posed on the people of any other nation or ment for the prohibition of Chinese labour kingdom." We may search through all the immigration, published by The Times on volumes of De Martens and Hertslet and Saturday, cannot be doubted. So many; we cannot find a treaty such as this neat little arrangements for getting out of which the Chinese have just reject certain difficulties of our own were led. Kings may prohibit, and have, for on the assumption that this Chinese-Ameri- reasons of their own, prohibited, their sub-can treaty. was safe; this was the starting- jects from going abroad or from emigration, point of the scheme for settling the Chinese to certain countries; but who ever heard of question in Australasia which commended s King taxing his own subjects, abridging itself to some statesmen in the colonies, their liberties, placing them in a position and which Lord Salisbury adopted'; the inferior to the subjects of all other Kings Americans, said the conference at Sydney, and Princes merely to aid another country have got s prohibitive treaty, let us have in getting out of a little difficulty? The the same; give us, said Lord Salisbury notion is preposterous, and accordingly i to Sir John Walsham in the despatch is only in these later days and in our deal-published on Saturday, the treaty which; ings with China that we hear of it. Let us you gave the Americans, and we shall be reverse the order and see how we should content; but lo! there is no such treaty, like it. Suppose the Chinese Minister in it has gone, vanished into thin air, and London to address a despatch to the For-Jard leagues, when' they have done rubbing! subjects were more numerous than the Salisbury and his Australian col- eign Ofice pointing out that British their eyes, will have.to begin again and! subjects of all other nationalities in China evolve some other method of settling the! put together; that they are therefore ex-authorities; that the example of the freedom, not to say licence, of the foreign settlements is utterly demoralising to' the Chinese around, sspping their notions of the respect due to authority. and thereby adding to the difficulties of government that British subjects are objected to-on the ground "'that they do not become assimilated withthe Chinesopopulation, and that they rarely, if ever, settle permanently as colo-rusts, but, on the contrary, remain essential.
aliens in manners, customs, and religion, and generally return to England when they have saved sufficient money in China for their wants in their native country"—if the Chinese Minister said all these things—and, as he has been Taotai of Shanghai, T have no doubt he could say much more—they would be perfectly true; but if he went on to demand in consequence a treaty prohibiting the immigration of British sub-Yer this i China—the imagination recoils, precisely what Lord Salisbury has just been doing atthe bidding of the Sydney conference. It may hi deed, it was said in the first leading arti which The Times devoted to the subject a few months ago—that the cases are not analogous, that there is a difference in numbers, that we carry improvement, and soon, But the Chinese Government may be pardoned for not. looking at the matter in this way; they would rather rule a hundred of their people any day than one average Englishman, and they are more than dubious about our improvements. If any one knowing the East and the position of the foreign settlements will take up Lord Salisburs despatch in Zhe Times of Satur. day and read into it British for Chinere and Chinese for British he will be surprised to find how accurately much of it applies to the existing circumstances of foreigners in China, Mautato-nomina de te tabula nar-
But I am more concerned to state and explain the grounds which have led the Chinese to refuse ratification to the United States treaty than to defend the "They regard the treaty as an ignominious surrender of the rights of the poorest and most helpless class of their people, as ment which is an indignity to them nation, and one which no other independent country would be asked by another to sign, But, it may de asked, if this is the case, why did they wait until now to find it out; why did they ever enter into nogotiations which were intended to conclude with this ignominious surrender! To this it may be said that China is not the only country that has negotiated an agreement which was not ultimately ratified; we have ourselves more than once delayed or refused altogether to ratify an agreement made with the Chinese, Our Minister in China concluded convention in 1869 which has not been ratified to this day; we took ten years to ratify the Chefoo Convention the United States occasionally refuse to ratify the treaties made by the Government and, generally, it stands to reason that, if ratification is necessary to the validity'and binding character of a treaty, it may be refused. But there are exceptional circumstances connected with treaty-making in China, Diplomacy is still a novelty in Chinese administration; at the best the Government, with its decentralization, is a lumbering' machine; it has never been settled by practice—for there has been no practice to speak of—who are the authorities that have a right to be consulted in treaty-making and who have no such right. The Tsung-li Yamen agrees to negotiate, and all is secrecy until the instrument containing the result of the negotiations is made public; then, for the first time, public opinion, such as it is, is brought to bear upon it, and the Government gives or refuses ratification accordingly. In the present case, it was specially easy to excite the dislike and suspicion of the Chinese to the treaty,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.